Downtown Tips

This is from an email from a Toronto based chowhound who asked me to post it for her (she's not real computer savvy). I don't know her personally, so caveat eator:

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I want to recommend to you a fairly new restaurant in my neighbourhood. It is a Chinese restaurant called Jade Village Chinese Cuisine, at 900 Don Mills Road, Unit 2, north of Eglinton, in the mall adjacent to Bob Bannerman Motors, next to Swiss Chalet.

This restaurant kept the decor from the previous Bar/Grill Nightclub and added a few things. It has clean surroundings, good fresh delicious food, we are fussy so we really enjoy this place. Ask for a table served by Johnny Wong, a restaurateur/waitperson extraordinaire. The dim sum is excellent, esp. the sticky rice steamed in a lotus leaf, great aroma and spicing, the food is fresh, hot, tasty, not heavy or oily. The staff are all well dressed Chinese style, cheerful, classy and gracious and welcoming. We have eaten there quite often since we discovered it. Sunday morning is best. They open early. It's noisy but not bad.

Around the corner of that same mall, try Noodle Delight, Chinese Food, McDonald's style, fast, but tasty and affordable. Otherwise there's not much excitement in the suburbs. You really gotta dig around for good grub in Don Mills.

Downtown on the south side of Dundas Street, between Chestnut Street and University there is a place called Istanbul Pizza, run by nice friendly Turkish people, they serve great pizza and Turkish food, shawarma, etc. worth the visit.

The Roti place in the Village by the Grange food court serves fresh, hot roti, and there is also Al's Fish & Chips in the same place, really good halibut and chips for $6.99. The only thing is they should serve a wedge of lemon and some tartar sauce with their orders. All the other condiments are on the table (vinegars, ketchup, salt, pepper.)

I work downtown so I eat out downtown. Baldwin street is worth checking out. Happy eating.

_____Also I forgot there is a restaurant at the foot of Augusta street, west of Dundas and Spadina in Kensington market, called Kings cafe or something like that , run by Taiwanese, with a boutique at the back for imported foodstuffs, really good food, an interesting menu with a variety of stuff you may like to vet and try. once my friend and I dined there one evening at the end of the day, the chef gave him some hot and sour soup to die for. He raved about it. the next time he went, it wasn't the same. (Why is that? different owner or chef? you never know, but worth the trip) there is an outdoor cafe and patio, friendly service. Also in Mississauga, there are lots of ethnic restaurants, my cousins and I are Chinese, they eat out a lot, they would know lots of good restaurants there. I'll write again if I recall any other interesting places. It's nice to know there are kindred spirits in this world with a similar interest. I've been collecting menus and articles on restaurants for years, don't always get to try them all, but it's nice to try.

It's been probably two years since I've been to King's Cafe, but the attraction was that it's vegetarian. (What, you didn't notice? It was that good? If there was a rave about hot-and-sour soup, it certainly wasn't the usual recipe!)

Actually, it was a good Chinese vegetarian restaurant, but we usually go either to Simon's Wok (at Gerrard Street, west of Logan) or Cafe 668 for Vietnamese vegetarian (Dundas Street, east of Bathurst).

Regarding Jade... It's quite expensive and the food wasn't very good. I went for dim sum and it took more than 45 minutes for the shrimp dumplings to arrive. In fact it did not arrive until after I paid the bill and asked for it to be cancelled. The dumplings themselves were small and ok at best, definitely not worth the $4.50 for the shrimp dumpling (!). For that price much better to go to Bayview Garden at Hwy 7, just E. of Bayview or the restaurant at Don Mills and Finch, strip mall in the North East side where the dumplings are huge and full of meat. Noodle delight is actually pretty bad for even Chinese fast food, unfortunately, there's not much near the Don Mills/Eglinton area. The food courts at the mall at HWY 7/Warden (west of Warden) are much better and super cheap. I live and work near Don Mills/Eglinton but I always go North for Chinese food.

Great, sorjue, thanks! Often a friendly negative report is as useful as a positive one. The goal, of course, is to eventually reach the point where none of us needs to consume anything undelcious ever, no matter where we ever find ourselves. Amen.